08/01/2022
Hood sets his stark and hopeful debut in the aftermath of a pandemic that has wiped out two-thirds of the planet’s population. Bill, a white psychologist, and Penelope, his Black financier wife, are living a placid life in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., when the shark flu, a deadly virus that emerged from Iceland’s melting permafrost, upends civilization and cuts them off from their daughter, Hannah, a college student in California. After Hannah contacts them by shortwave radio (the only form of long-distance communication left) to tell them she’s joined the Revival, a quasi-religious cult that demands renunciation of one’s family, Bill and Penelope trek across America’s decimated landscape to rescue her. Hood’s narrative follows the familiar pattern of many postapocalyptic narratives, with Bill and Penelope crossing the paths of a broad cross-section of fellow survivors in encounters both benign and dangerous. Though their near escapes often feel convenient, Hood offers wry commentary on the new social order (the government’s approving euphemism for looting, “Manage Existing Resources,” is still seen as looting when done by Black people), as well as enriching insights on the fault lines in Bill and Penelope’s marriage. As disaster fare, it’s run of the mill, but it works better as an affecting family drama. Agent: Henry Dunow. Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary. (Oct.)
"It’s hard to imagine a story more necessary now than one about humanity somehow persisting in the face of civilization’s collapse. In The Revivalists, Christopher M. Hood makes an utterly convincing argument for love’s power to lend meaning and purpose to existence. Hood is a master dramatist; tense, anxious scenes resonate loudly after their tuning forks are struck. We swing from terror, to humor, to trenchant political commentary, to the strange resilience of psychotherapy to the limitless capacity for the Wu Tang Clan to delight and edify across generations."
The Revivalists is a thrilling, terrifying, surprising, and tender debut, written in such exquisitely precise prose that I felt singed by its imaginary fires and warmed by its beating heart. Chris Hood's nightmarish cross-country family odyssey is also one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever read.
"In rendering a fictional pandemic Christopher Hood’s gutsy debut is a reminder of art’s power to tell us about reality. The Revivalists isn’t a story about the apocalypse but an odyssey through the America we currently inhabit, as thrilling (I read it in two dazed sittings) as it is thoughtful about race and class, need and want, and the power of parental love."
"From the very first page, Christopher Hood's debut forcefully claims the reader's attention and does not release it until the entire fascinating, suspenseful journey is done. This is an American story through and through, written in keen, lively prose, stirringly speculative while being alarmingly recognizable and real. The Revivalists is urgent, beguiling, compassionate, and strikingly relevant."
2022-10-12
A fast-paced addition to the rapidly growing genre of the post-apocalyptic road novel.
Bill and Penelope are among the fortunate few, in theory. Two-thirds of the population has succumbed to a "Shark Flu" pandemic, but they've just "dipped." Debut novelist Hood adroitly lays out his premise and explores the plague's aftermath. In their suburban–NYC enclave, the couple are well insulated. There are plenty of "Formerly Occupied Homes" from which to "Manage Existing Resources"; most survivors keep their distance at first, but the neighborly nonviolent order survives. Bill and Penelope plant a garden. Bill even reopens his psychology practice to survivors, who barter for the talking cure. But Bill and Penelope learn from their daughter in California via ham radio that she too has survived—and seems on the verge of joining a cult. They decide their only course, their manifest destiny as parents, is to go west. What follows is a familiar but often entertaining hellscape picaresque. Hood smartly makes the marriage the story's center, and some adventures/interludes—especially after they crash into a herd of cattle in Kansas, encounter roving lions (!), then find themselves in a picture-postcard town that's abandoned but for a lonely siren who wants Bill to impregnate her—show wit and playfulness. Elsewhere, though, predictability sets in, often in the form of a right-mindedness that Bill projects and that the world, his secret co-conspirator, reflects back at him. Penelope and Bill fool macho nitwits playing soldier and flee while their guards watch porn, escaping into the arms of a much more with-it feminist collective. They encounter a saintly Native American distributing medicine from an 18-wheeler, then a spectacularly cool and noble “BIPOC collective” that's holding the Rockies, maintaining a buffer against the conspiracy-theory nut-job racists (wittily, Hood essentially calls them QVC-Anon) who've occupied Idaho, Utah, and Nevada.
Hood offers an entertaining update of the western migration tale, with ATVs and Camaros for covered wagons.
"In rendering a fictional pandemic Christopher Hood’s gutsy debut is a reminder of art’s power to tell us about reality. The Revivalists isn’t a story about the apocalypse but an odyssey through the America we currently inhabit, as thrilling (I read it in two dazed sittings) as it is thoughtful about race and class, need and want, and the power of parental love." — Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind
“The Revivalists is a thrilling, terrifying, surprising, and tender debut, written in such exquisitely precise prose that I felt singed by its imaginary fires and warmed by its beating heart. Chris Hood's nightmarish cross-country family odyssey is also one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever read.” — Karen Russell, bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Orange World
"It’s hard to imagine a story more necessary now than one about humanity somehow persisting in the face of civilization’s collapse. In The Revivalists, Christopher M. Hood makes an utterly convincing argument for love’s power to lend meaning and purpose to existence. Hood is a master dramatist; tense, anxious scenes resonate loudly after their tuning forks are struck. We swing from terror, to humor, to trenchant political commentary, to the strange resilience of psychotherapy to the limitless capacity for the Wu Tang Clan to delight and edify across generations." — Matthew Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves
"From the very first page, Christopher Hood's debut forcefully claims the reader's attention and does not release it until the entire fascinating, suspenseful journey is done. This is an American story through and through, written in keen, lively prose, stirringly speculative while being alarmingly recognizable and real. The Revivalists is urgent, beguiling, compassionate, and strikingly relevant." — Jamel Brinkley, National Book Award finalist for A Lucky Man
“An affecting family drama.” — Publishers Weekly
“An entertaining update of the western migration tale, with ATVs and Camaros for covered wagons.” — Kirkus Reviews
"Fans of Station Eleven and Swamplandia! will fall hard for this taut debut novel . . . . Told with breakneck pacing and surprising tenderness, The Revivalists is an affecting tale about the unstoppable force of parental love." — Esquire
". . . interesting . . . . frightening, and original." — CrimeReads
"Unlike much doomsday fiction, however, The Revivalists is chiefly about personalities." — USA Today
"[The Revivalists is] a terrifying novel about survival in a world that’s doing its best to make humanity extinct—but at its heart, it’s a love story." — Orange County Register
